What is San-Antonio all about ?

Does the word cloud above provide an answer to the question asked in the title of this post ? And is that of any use to anyone? The cloud is based on the titles from the 175 novels published in the crime series “The investigations of Commissaire San-Antonio”. Does is tell us something we did not know about San-Antonio ? And if we don’t know who San-Antonio is, or haven’t read his books does it help us forming a first impression? Does it allow us to find a way through his work? But maybe what we are being told here is not so much something about San-Antonio, but about distant reading. How do you go about with the material which raw (or refined) data gives you? How do you start building a narrative, and research questions around it?

It is for readers to judge if such simple (or more complex) visualisation can give a fair representation of San-Antonio. Not, of course, of the content of San-Antonio’s novels, as the titles are famously disconnected from the plot. But of the signifiers used by the series to connect with the public.

The San-Antonio conference taking place in Belfast this week end will help to discuss his work at length and renew our understanding of this huge body of work, read by millions.